Winning battles, losing wars
by hobbitkisses
Summary: Klaine slash; 6x08 (A Wedding) reaction fic. Short, fluffy and angsty, complete but unedited.


**Winning battles, losing wars**

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**Klaine slash; 6x08 (**_**A Wedding**_**) reaction fic. Short, fluffy and angsty, complete but unedited. **

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"Mm-wait-"

Kurt breaks free from the kiss abruptly, leaving Blaine panting. The chestnut-haired man breathes heavily, leaning back a bit and asking:

"What about Karofsky? Where is he? And… Boxes?" He glances around the room. Blaine purses his lips.

"We broke up," He confesses. "I broke up with him. He's moving out."

Kurt's eyes widen.

"Really?" He breathes, but then blushes furiously and rushes to say: "I mean – I'm sorry, Blaine. Why?"

"Because," Blaine shifts on his feet awkwardly, "I wasn't over you. And Dave noticed that, so he told me to go get you."

Kurt frowns a bit.

"That's… Very sweet," He starts slowly. "But why didn't you tell me? Was it recently?"

Now it's Blaine's turn to blush.

"No," He admits. "A while ago, actually. I was going to tell you-I went to meet you, but. Well."

He falls silent. Kurt tries to remember when that could have been, shuffling through his memories of these last days with Blaine, and then it dawns on him.

"The choir room," He recalls. "You came – you seemed upset, or in a hurry, or something. You said you were looking for Rachel, but then you forgot why."

Blaine purses his lips. Kurt stares.

"You were going to ask me to get back together?"

"Walter threw me off," Blaine explains quietly, indirectly answering the question. "I didn't want to get in between you two."

Kurt's hands are curled around the other man's shoulders, and their grip tightens unconsciously.

"Blaine, you will always be in between me and everyone else, because you're the one I'm supposed to be with," He says gently. "And I would've left Walter for you right there, you know. The fact that you were with Karofsky was the only thing holding me back from confessing I'll never be over you."

Blaine smiles at that, his expression the same as it was that night at Rachel's party, and he leans in to kiss Kurt. His hands settle on the chestnut-haired man's hips lightly. Kurt draws him in closer, until they are pressed together tightly, and the kiss turns slow and deep. It's so comforting and familiar that it makes Blaine's heart ache, and that knot in his chest that has been there since their second break up finally, thoroughly loosens and disappears.

It has been such a long time since he felt this _okay_, and not just _okay_ as in "I'm-living-and-I'm-working-through-it-and-dating-others-and-forcing-myself-to-move-on-because-I-can't-go-back-to-how-I-felt-the-first-time-we-broke-up"-_okay_. He has figured out how to live without Kurt, and not just how to survive. He can make it without him. It's just that he really, really doesn't want to.

"I love you," He breathes in to Kurt's mouth. "I love you, Kurt."

And Kurt _looks_ at him, with his color-shifting, brightly shining eyes and awed expression that doesn't really allow his smile to break through, and Blaine loves him to bits, loves every inch of him and every side of him – even the worse ones, even the ones they have to work with. It's Kurt, it's all Kurt, and he's here, with Blaine, _together, _both in the same place, ready again.

"I love you too," Kurt says firmly in a low voice. "More than you know."

Blaine only nods, because he _does _know, and he inhales deeply. Kurt leans his forehead against Blaine's shoulder and loops his arms around his neck, breathing him in. The dark-haired man slowly lets his hands slide on to Kurt's back, eyes fluttering shut in the warm, comforting familiarity of his arms.

Later, much later, when they are lying in bed in the dark, naked and utterly exposed in every way possible, Kurt's cheek flat against Blaine's collarbone and his finger tracing circles on his chest, he quietly confesses:

"I never thought we'd do this again."

Kurt lets out something between a sigh and a chuckle.

"I _knew _we'd do this again. Really, Blaine, you should have had some faith, you pessimist."

Blaine smiles. He threads his fingers through Kurt's hair, and the other man hums in approval.

"This is nice. It feels like old times," Blaine says fondly.

"Like nothing happened," Kurt agrees.

But it _did _happen, Blaine thinks. It did happen, and they learned and grew from it. Otherwise, they'd never be here.

"I hate that it happened, but at the same time, I'm happy it did," Kurt speaks Blaine's thoughts. "Is that weird?"

"No," He replies. "Not at all."

Kurt waits briefly before continuing:

"It's not that we needed this. I screwed up, and it was totally unnecessary. But-I think _I _needed this," He pushes himself up to look at Blaine. His face is all angels and shadows in the dark. "To know how much you're worth to me. I kept telling myself that I did know, that I didn't take you for granted, but on some level, I think I did. And this – it taught me to fight for you. For _us._ I'm happy about that."

Blaine regards him silently. Kurt purses his lips and then looks away, placing his cheek on Blaine's chest again.

"It was nice to have you fight for me," The dark-haired man admits after a long moment of silence. "It felt… Relieving. To know that I wasn't the only one always ready to fight for us," He swallows. "Except for this time. I got so tired of fighting, Kurt. It stopped feeling like it was worth it, if you didn't think it was. Like… Like no matter how many battles I won, I was still fighting a losing war."

Kurt's finger, which has resumed tracing circles, comes to a stop.

"I'm sorry," He says quietly, almost whispers, his voice rasping a tiny bit. "I didn't mean to make you feel that way. I was just scared."

Blaine doesn't even try to stop the word that has been in his mouth for so long, rolling around clumsily on his tongue and growing bigger and bigger, until he sometimes has thought its sour, burning taste would suffocate him.

"Why?"

He can picture Kurt chewing his lip, but he keeps his eyes on the wall on the other side of the room. He can barely make it out in the dark.

"I don't know," Kurt starts cautiously, "I think… I think I was scared. Maybe I had expected everything to turn out perfect from the moment we got engaged, and the fighting and problems and _reality _of it just threw me off. And I kept thinking that if I lost you then, it'd hurt so much more, because we were soon to be husbands and it was all so much bigger than it used to be, and so much more complicated – except it really wasn't, it wasn't complicated at all, I _made _it complicated and couldn't stop over thinking and-" He stops abruptly, takes a deep breath. "I have this thing with love. I thought that if I'd shield myself off, if I'd build walls, it'd be easier to cope if something went wrong. I never expected _me _to be the thing that went wrong. I-I was so scared of losing you, Blaine, that I actually lost you."

Blaine keeps still and tense, staring at the wall, but the hand he has kept in Kurt's hair now slides down to his shoulder, and its grip tightens noticeably without his own permission. He presses his lips together tightly, and he doesn't really notice that quiet tears are trailing down his cheeks until they reach the corner of his mouth and he can taste their saltiness.

The silence lingers, both men keeping immensely still. Kurt doesn't make a sound until he hesitantly speaks in to the darkness:

"Blaine?"

Blaine swallows slowly. He closes his eyes for a moment, forcing the remaining tears out, and then opens both them and his mouth at the same time.

"I have this thing with love, too," He says. His voice is surprisingly steady. "I never thought I'd find love. I never thought I'd have all of this. And when I got it, I couldn't admit to myself that we had problems, I couldn't admit to myself that some things were wrong, and I kept fighting and fighting to keep the bad things at bay, but it doesn't work that way, I know that now. You can't just hold the problems off without dealing with them. And… I blamed myself."

He stops and closes his eyes again. Kurt waits patiently.

"I thought everything always was my fault," He says, and this time, his voice cracks slightly. "I thought I was the one doing something wrong. I thought I was the source of the problems, and then I kept trying to magically make them go away, which really was the source the entire time. I didn't know how to deal, and I couldn't just stop and think about it, I couldn't, I needed to stay in the comfort of a relationship like this, I couldn't go back again – not after having experienced how it actually was to _have_ love."

Kurt suddenly shifts, sitting up and turning his body toward Blaine, who's leaning his head against the wall behind the bed and trying furiously to blink back the tears. Kurt folds his legs underneath himself and slowly cups the other man's face, sliding his fingers in to the dark, restrained curls and resting his thumbs by Blaine's sideburns. He gently pries the teary man to face him.

"It wasn't your fault, Blaine," He says softly. "Making one mistake doesn't mean that everything is your fault. This break up wasn't because of you. I did wrong, and then I had to fight for you – just like it's supposed to be like. I had to earn back your trust. It was stupid of me to place the entire weight of our relationship on you in the first place."

"I know that now," Blaine tells him honestly. He looks at Kurt, drinks in his features – every angle and shadow and line. "I'm seeing a therapist. It helps. I know that now."

Kurt nods encouragingly.

"Good," He says, shifting a bit. "Good. I am too. It's good for us to deal with this – it'll help us to make it work this time. But if it doesn't, it's not always your fault. You need to know that. _I _need to you to know that."

His eyes are pools of soothing calm, their color impossible to make out in the dark. Blaine nods.

"You're the best boyfriend and friend anyone could ever wish for," Kurt whispers suddenly. "And I'm so sorry that I hurt you."

The words are raw and heavy, their weight lingering in the air. Blaine inhales sharply and surges forward, pressing his mouth to Kurt's. It's clumsy and off-center and messy, too much emotions and too many words crammed in to one kiss, but Kurt knows and he _understands_, and Blaine wraps his arms around him and draws him in _closer, closer, closer._

Kurt moves his mouth and starts kissing away the tears on Blaine's cheeks, and he lets out a breathy laugh. The chestnut-haired man smiles against his skin, and takes a deep breath.

"Thank you," He says solemnly in a low voice. "For forgiving me."

Blaine's shoulders sag.

"You forgave me the first time."

One of Kurt's hands on Blaine's cheeks gently turns his face to him, and he kisses him deeply. Blaine's palm slides up Kurt's naked back as he kisses back, feeling the muscles working under the skin.

"Always," Kurt promises when they pull away.


End file.
